"And I shall tell him that you love him still. Is it not so, mademoiselle?" said Vétérin, huskily.
"Yes, yes!" Rachel answered, struggling with her rising tears. She caught the trooper by the arm, clasping his great muscles with her two hands, and her breath fanned his face. "Tell him that—that I love him as much as—as I despise myself; that my heart, which I gave to him, must always be his; that all my thoughts are of him, are with him wherever he goes. And you may tell him, monsieur, if you like, that my heart is breaking—no, no; you must not say that! He would come to see me, and he must not. Oh, mon Dieu!"
The clinging fingers tightened round the soldier's arm; the voice broke off into a sob. Vétérin's eyes were wet. He blinked fiercely.
"Take him my message. Tell him all this. But you cannot, wanting my voice and my eyes, in which he used to read every thought. Yet you will remember how I looked and what I said. And you will tell Nicolas that I love him as he taught me to, that without him all the world has grown dark, and that I shall love him until I die!"
The trooper caught her to him, for he felt that she was falling. Rachel controlled herself by a strong effort, and she pushed him gently toward the door. Vétérin turned to give one last look at that supplicating figure, with the dishevelled hair in sweet confusion about the tear-stained face; then he went out. He muttered, in a voice that he might not have known as his own:
Peste! It seems to me that this Simon Mansart is very much in the way!"
III.
On the evening of that day Simon Mansart was sitting alone before a handful of fire when he heard his big dogs barking with anger. As the disturbance continued he went to the door, and he thought he perceived without, in the black night, a blacker shadow beyond the gate.
"Will you call off your lambs?" shouted a voice.
"Who are you? And what do you want?" cried Mansart, always terribly suspicious of strangers, and especially those who arrived after dusk.